Most Corporations Don’t Pay Income Taxes
Don’t go all crazy over this. Even reading the full article at CQ takes a little time to digest. The period was eight years, 1998-2005, and in some cases a corporation may not have paid taxes in one of the years. With the chatter to impose a windfall profits tax on Big Oil it would not surprise if this earlier August report was responsible in some way for fanning the flames. If people can say the economy is in the crapper simply because its an election year while, go figure, it improved above expectations, then those same people may create villains in corporate America over the report discussed here.
Any time one mentions taxes there is likely to be an endless stream of complaints. The tax system in the US has been a mess for years. If any entity legally avoids paying taxes and there are still complaints, take it up with the legislature. But this report provides a quote from Finance Chairman Max Baucus that $345 billion is owed but not collected in taxes. It would be nice to know more about that. From the unfairness of the tax code to the reluctance to a flat tax or one based on sales or something besides the so-called progressive tax to uncollected revenue and pork-barrel and earmark spending the legislature has failed to provide any landmark changes to correct the code.
The grants, subsidies, credits and other offsets designed to influence behavior of the public through legislation as social or economic policy as well as entitlements is a monster than won’t soon be slayed. But there is as usual enough blame to go around and in this election year it would be unfair to direct all criticism to members of either major political party without accounting for the public’s responsibility to change along with Washington.
Stanford Matthews
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